


i'd sooner be eaten by you (than fed by anyone else)

by Wagandea



Category: Persona 4
Genre: Adachi being Adachi, Disturbing Themes, M/M, Remix
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-22
Updated: 2018-10-22
Packaged: 2019-08-03 04:01:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,214
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16318760
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wagandea/pseuds/Wagandea
Summary: Adachi likes Namatame. He really does.





	i'd sooner be eaten by you (than fed by anyone else)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dNwfvBj9](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dNwfvBj9/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Folly of Man](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16127375) by [dNwfvBj9](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dNwfvBj9/pseuds/dNwfvBj9). 



> Remix of [Folly of Man](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16127375) so make sure to check that out too! (I would recommend reading it before this one anyway for added context, though this fic does stand alone)

                    i.

Namatame reminds him of the stray cats near Samegawa, underfed and skittish. They slink away unless you approach with food, but _hey_ , who doesn’t? It doesn’t have to be food, _whatever_ , the point is that everyone’s looking to be fed and the palm of an empty hand is a threat, not an invitation.

Adachi always has his hands full. Namatame is soaking wet on the riverbank, rain coming down in sheets. His white button up clings to him like a second skin, translucent and ugly, and Adachi can see the curved outlines of his ribs. Even the cats aren’t out in this weather.

Namatame’s hands are cold when Adachi forces his fingers closed around the handle of his umbrella. (“Geez, here, take mine. Stay safe going home, okay?”) He doesn’t react visibly, but his eyes are wide and cautious. Wet socks and 1000 yen for a new umbrella, Adachi decides, is a price he’s willing to pay. It’s all about the approach. Namatame’s a little funny, though. He reminds Adachi of the cats, and he reminds Adachi of himself. So, yeah, he likes him. Hopes this works out for him, phone call and all, this TV business, but maybe it’d be more interesting if it _doesn’t_.

Adachi leaves him standing on the riverbank, little streams of water cascading down around him off what had once been Adachi’s umbrella. It’d be a shame to have just walked away.

 

                    ii.

Maybe _hoping it works out for him_ isn’t the right way to put this. Adachi watches Amagi Yukiko twist and turn on the TV and what he really hopes for is this: A repeat of the fog-covered shopping district early in the morning, and a pretty girl strung up high against the cloud backdrop. And another, and another. He’ll hand Dojima a coffee over the body when they finally get her down.

It’s the perfect crime: For Adachi, and Namatame, and whatever thing it was that gave them this power in the first place. He likes the idea of keeping his hands clean.

But he supposes what that means is he hopes Namatame feels _good_ about it, the way Adachi felt when Konishi Saki slipped away through the screen. Good isn’t the right word. He hopes that Namatame feels fed. You can develop a taste for anything.

Amagi turns up alive a week later. Perhaps unluckily for Namatame, Adachi is adaptable.

 

                    iii.

Namatame doesn’t remember him, or maybe he does. It rains the day after Tatsumi shows up. Adachi wears a yellow raincoat and presses the tip of his pencil so hard against his evidence book that it breaks.

“I went to the textile shop to make a delivery.” Stupid, stupid, _stupid_. Adachi’s apologetic smile freezes in place.

“Sorry Namatame-san, I’m gonna have to cut our conversation short, I really have to get back to the station,” he says, and to his credit nothing changes in his voice. He shrugs helplessly, pocketing the notepad. “That’s all I needed though, you’re free to go.”

Adachi does not consider himself a particularly _kind_ man. He calls Namatame that night anyway, from a payphone in the foggy shopping district at midnight, hand over his mouth to muffle the tone and temper of his voice. “Be more careful next time.”

 

                    iv.

Namatame is soft and malleable, but he never manages to hold the shape Adachi tries to give him. It’s a work in progress. Namatame hangs around at Junes too long after he makes his routine deliveries, and Adachi catches sight of Seta with his little band of friends making their way to the elevators. No one looks his way; the two of them are practically invisible, slacker cop and quiet deliveryman.

Adachi might not have Seta’s magnetism, but he has everything else going for him. Now that he has Namatame.

The company is just… an unexpected plus. Namatame watches him a lot these days, and Adachi keeps catching glimpses of something like politely restrained want out of the corner of his eyes.

“What’s your favorite food, Adachi-san?”

It isn’t quite hunger, not yet, but Adachi can work with that. Namatame sticks to small snippets of conversation, always carefully appropriate. Adachi’s smile sharpens.

“Um, well, I’ll eat almost anything. Hey, you should come over to my place for dinner sometime--we can split a sushi tray.”

 

                    v.

Adachi holds his liquor well, which naturally means he plays up the reverse. It takes skill to be underestimated. It’s performative in its execution; he makes a show of drinking the rest of his too sweet shochu highball in one go, and catches Namatame watching.

Risette has just been returned to the land of the living. Another one _saved_ , but Namatame is still starving, Adachi can _see_ it.

He buys Namatame a beer, then two, then three, in the hopes that he might do something interesting. An empty hand is a threat. Namatame doesn’t, but that’s _fine_ , Adachi’s been doing nothing but waiting since April, and sooner or later they all have to eat.

(He lets Adachi get his hands under his jacket, though, in the shadows outside Shiroku. Namatame is shy and skittish and it’s almost _cute_ , but he lets Adachi push him against the wall and slot his fingers in the spaces between his ribs--Adachi is _terribly drunk_ , what could he possibly do?

Adachi lets him go, despite himself, and hopes the taste of peach chuhai lingers on the back of Namatame’s tongue as a deceptively sweet reminder, something to mask the bitterness. After all, he _likes_ Namatame. He really does.)

 

                    vi.

The Kubo kid doesn’t fight back, not as much as he should. Maybe it’s the shock, taken by surprise, unable to see his attacker with the lights off. Maybe he just doesn’t _care_. Adachi’s disappointed at the lack of a fight (what’s a kick to the ribs anyway, a little blood between your teeth?), until he has his hands around the kid’s throat. No one’s ever let him do that, not even in the fun way.

It’s these little acts of cruelty, really, that calm something in him, satiate some gnawing desire to do harm. The Hunger. Lust. Adachi names it, then puts it out of his head. Killing has its kick but this is _better_.

He’s elbow deep in the television screen, a cool ripping around his shirtsleeves, when he thinks of Namatame. His hands tighten around Kubo’s neck. It’s self-serving, _sure_ , but Adachi never _had_ to kill Kubo, it’d tie everything up in a neat little knot. TV Killer caught, case over, Adachi back to his _real_ job and Namatame’s conscience cleared knowing he doesn’t have to _save_ anyone else.

It’s a perfect out for all of them, but _hey_ , Adachi cares about Namatame, thinks he eventually deserves the truth. No one ever said the truth was a good thing. He lets go--and Kubo falls, falls, falls.

 

                    vii.

He takes Namatame out for drinks the night Shirogane turns back up at the station after disappearing, and delivers the _good news_ himself. Namatame’s face doesn’t light up the way it should, but he still eats the conversation out of Adachi’s hand like he’s being offered nothing more sinister than a bowl of kaki peanuts to go with his beer.

Adachi complains about work, and Namatame eases up. Adachi buys him a drink, and Namatame takes him home.

Namatame’s front door is white, but the chipped frame is painted red. Adachi kisses him on the threshold like a man starving. His fingernails cut crescent moons into the back of Namatame’s neck, and the taste of the peach chuhai Adachi bought him lingers at Namatame’s mouth.

 

                    viii.

Namatame acts like he’s never fucked someone before, or at least never enjoyed doing it. Adachi concludes he did Namatame a favor by getting rid of the bitch, hears his wife’s divorcing him too. Good riddance.

“This is how you do it,” Adachi says at Namatame’s ear, and runs his thin hands down the bony outline of Namatame’s chest. His fingers fit in the grooves between Namatame’s ribs. His skin is cool to the touch, and he looks sickly in this half lighting, skin milky white and waxy, like something dead. Adachi moves his hands lower. He trails his mouth down Namatame’s neck and bites down hard where neck meets collarbone, hard enough to draw blood. It isn’t enough to quell Adachi’s hunger, but it takes the edge off, doesn’t think he’ll ever feel fed.

Adachi cleans up after, and Namatame’s bathroom is an unpleasant contrast of cracked red tile and peeling powder blue paint. Adachi stares at himself in the cloudy mirror above the sink, feeling the weight of what he’s done. Maybe in some other universe this could be what it looks like, two exceptionally lonely and miserable men finding comfort in each other.

“This is how you do it,” Adachi tells his reflection, and hopes Yamano Mayumi is rolling over in her fucking grave.

 

                    ix.

Seta makes a habit of feeding the stray cats down at Samegawa. He has fresh fish, sometimes, or canned tuna. Today, he approaches without. The cats come to him anyway, rub against his legs and push their heads into his empty palm. Seta is calm, and he’s patient; it’s caring in execution, but the cats don’t ever belong to him and it seems so _self gratifying._

Adachi stands to the side with his umbrella askew and water seeping into his socks. “After a while, they start to trust you without the food,” Seta explains, and watches him watching. He smiles faintly, tight-tipped and vacant. But he doesn’t produce any food after, either, and Adachi is left feeling _inexplicably sorry_ for the cats.

They don’t get anything worthwhile, anyway. Any snot nosed brat would pet them, stroke along the knobby spine and slot their fingers between too-prominent ribs. This is about surviving, not being liked. But how cute they are, how pitiful. They eat attention out of Souji’s hand, and gain nothing for it.

“It’s a pretty shit deal if you ask me,” Adachi says, but his brows are drawn upwards and his expression meaningless, “for the cats.”

Seta is quiet in thought. One of the cats nips at his fingertips. He turns his face away from Adachi, dismissive. “Everything wants to feel liked, Adachi-san.”

 

                    x.

Namatame’s wrists are thin, and the bones creak under Adachi’s grip. He allows himself to be moved, he’s standing there shaking in front of Adachi, from fear or anticipation or anger. The light in the interrogation room is fluorescent and sickly, casts shadows into the hollows of Namatame’s face that make him look half dead. He might as well be. Adachi presses his fingertips into Namatame’s palms and sighs.

 _Did you kill them,_ Namatame asks, and what Adachi says is this: “You’re just like your girlfriend. She was a pain to deal with too.” But it isn’t what he means, and if Adachi were being honest with any of them; Namatame, himself, the dead women and the cats at Samegawa and fucking Seta Souji, he would ask _when_. He doesn’t want to know, not really. This went wrong somewhere, at Shiroku, on the riverbank, in Namatame’s shitty bathroom, does it _matter?_ Namatame took his lover’s killer to bed intentionally or he didn’t, whatever, they still end up in this interrogation room.

He’s caught off guard by that, and caught off guard by the push, too, doesn’t so much see the television screen around him as _feel_ it, like he’s been doused in cold water. What’s a kick to the ribs anyway, a little blood between your teeth? They struggle at the threshold, in the TV frame, and it occurs to Adachi in the in-between, occurs to him in some distant detached voice that resembles Seta’s, that maybe this stings because he was getting used to the feeling of being liked; peach chuhai on the tongue and Namatame’s ribs under his palms.

At some point he gains the upper hand; Adachi’s hands are around Namatame’s throat, and he doesn’t have to do this, he doesn’t have to.

“This is how you do it,” he snarls, and his hands tighten. He catches sight of his reflection in the dark screen, ugly and half-mad, a golden shift around the eyes. It ripples away when Namatame’s head cuts through the screen. They’re entangled, like they’ve consumed each other or are in the process of doing so; and when Namatame tips through the screen, Adachi falls, falls, falls.

 

                    +1.

In the dream Adachi doesn’t have, the fog is thick and suffocating. It’s a clean fog, white and soft, blurs the stark red outlines of red gates against the powder blue sky. He isn’t running, not anymore.

Namatame is wearing white too, kimono crossed right over left, red obi loose around his hips. Adachi’s hands come back red too when he tries to touch him. Namatame’s skin is cold, ugly and transparent. The fog clings to him and he feels filthy, weighed down.

“I loved you,” Namatame croaks out, eyes wide and dark, but he isn’t looking at Adachi at all. Adachi recoils in disgust, but it’s already too late--spider lilies sprout from the cracks of the tiles around Namatame’s feet, and they reach for him like so many skeletal crimson hands.

**Author's Note:**

> [tumblr](https://wagandea.tumblr.com/) | [twitter](https://twitter.com/wagandea)


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